Martin W. Johnson

Martin Wiggo Johnson (September 30, 1893 – November 28, 1984), was an American oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He is known as an author of the landmark reference work The Oceans: Their Physics, Chemistry and General Biology (1942, 1970); for explaining the deep scattering layer (DSL) as a result of what is now called the diel vertical migration; and for studies of zooplankton that revealed that the physics of water movement was an important influence on population biology and community diversity. He was later awarded a PhD by the university.

Research With Harald Sverdrup and Richard H. Fleming, Johnson wrote The Oceans: Their Physics, Chemistry and General Biology, considered a landmark reference work. It was written for an interdisciplinary course in general oceanography at Scripps.

Johnson proposed an explanation for the deep scattering layer (DSL), a puzzling phenomenon observed by Navy sonar during World War II, in which the depth of the ocean appeared to change.

After the war, Johnson helped to establish the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations and the Marine Life Research Group at Scripps. Johnson and the Scripps graduate students studied the California Current and did fundamental research to establish the nature and life histories of zooplankton populations. They observed that the area of the California Current contained an unusual and extensive mixing of species which had larger populations in other areas. This work led to a "heretical" theory, supported by further research, that the physics of water movement was an important factor underlying explanations of population biology and community diversity.

After retiring as a professor emeritus, Johnson studied the larval development of Pacific lobsters and identified differing developmental sequences. He produced illustrations and caricatures.

Taxon named in his honor The Fringelip snake eel Cirricaecula johnsoni is named in his honor.

Personal life Johnson was a mandolin player and had a wood carving hobby. In 1983 a scientific paper, Spectral properties of Noctiluca miliaris Suriray, a heterotrophic dinoflagellate, by W.M. Balch and F.T. Haxo, was "...dedicated to Martin W. Johnson on the occasion of his 90th birthday."